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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26168866">Skitter and Wail</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaCelt/pseuds/AvaCelt'>AvaCelt</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Gothic Horror Prompt Fills - 2020 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hunter X Hunter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Ghosts, Horror, Monsters, Nonbinary Character, Other</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:20:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,882</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26168866</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaCelt/pseuds/AvaCelt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Two lovers rendezvous in the worst place possible, and end up getting a surprise visit from a curious third party. [PitoKai, modern AU, romance horror]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kaito | Kite/Neferpitou (Hunter X Hunter)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Gothic Horror Prompt Fills - 2020 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1900357</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Skitter and Wail</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“This place is creepy,” Kite groused, trying to wipe the black dust off his fingers and onto Neferpitou's navy jacket, “and disgusting.”</p><p>Neferpitou purred into the taller man's neck, hands cold as stone underneath Kite's sweater and pressed against his stomach. Kite drew in a long breath as Neferpitou's lips ghosted over his collarbone and up his jaw. When his lover met his eyes, he finally exhaled.</p><p>Any other place, and Kite would have drowned in the liquid gold of their eyes.</p><p>“Are you listening to me?” Kite deadpanned when a hand went over to his butt and pinched lightly. He barely flinched. “This place is nasty, Pitou; there's filth everywhere.”</p><p>Neferpitou gave him a coy smile and went to press their chests together, only to be met with a firm hand to their chest. Neferpitou blinked in confusion. “Huh?”</p><p>Kite picked up his dirty finger and showed Neferpitou the remnants of the black dust. “I'm not having relations with you in the basement of a condemned building,” he said pointedly.</p><p>Neferpitou bit their cheek before answering. “Why not?”</p><p>Kite forgot how dumb his lover was. For an esteemed surgeon, he was surprised the shorter of the two had survived the playground, much less the grueling trenches of medical school. Alas, what would he know? He was just another poor scientist living off scraps academia threw his way.</p><p>“... because it's disgusting,” Kite said finally.</p><p>Neferpitou seemed to consider his answer. “It's just dust-” they began, but Kite was looming over the shorter of the two before they could get out another word.</p><p>Kite huffed and turned to leave, while Neferpitou groaned dramatically. “We can't have sex in your office again; it's too small!”</p><p>“We'll just have to hold it together until the apartment is finished,” Kite mumbled back listlessly. Kite was still living with roommates, and Neferpitou still lived with their family, and their shared lovenest wouldn't be ready for their arrival for another month, and motels were out of the question because Kite was poor but prideful, and refused to get a single single room unless they were splitting the costs in half.</p><p>Neferpitou knew Kite didn't have half the money since he put most of it on the down payment for their new home, and so they'd found random little places to drag Kite into so they could canoodle for a little bit, and occasionally go at it like bunnies. The first place was Neferpitou's office, but that was an almost-tragedy when Neferpitou's nurses almost walked in. The second place was the attic of Ging Freecss' pawn shop, but once they'd come downstairs, Ging had threatened to kill them both. The third time was in Kite's office, but the space was so small and cramped, a bookshelf almost toppled over and took Neferpitou's life (and Kite's underneath theirs) in the middle of their passionate lovemaking session.</p><p>And now they were in a dilapidated building set to be demolished over the next few months, and apparently Neferpitou had found it while driving around town in their brand new Cadillac Kite refused to christen with them because it was new and butt sweat could and <em>would</em> ruin the leather. It wasn't even Kite's car, and he'd been furious for it when Neferpitou had first asked.</p><p>Water dripped somewhere in the darkness and Kite shivered. A single bulb was the only bit of illumination in the room, and it was well past closing hours for the local shops. The nearest convenience store was a good four blocks up the road, and Neferpitou had parked their Cadillac next to it. Water dripped again, and Kite grabbed his partner's hand and began dragging them up the stairs, because to <em>hell </em>with late-night canoodling in some abandoned building, they'd just have to suck it up and brave it like all the other touch-starved souls of the world. At least they had Skype calls and dinner every Friday night at the Chinese joint next to Kite's current hovel.</p><p>Something skittered close by and Kite willed his fear to stay silent. It was a bloody basement in a bloody building, and they were <em>leaving </em>damn it, karma shouldn't so cruel. They hadn't even gotten to the raunchy part!</p><p>“Stay quiet, move slowly,” Neferpitou whispered suddenly. Kite almost jumped, but Neferpitou had somehow gotten a grip around his waist, and steadied him before he could make anymore noise.</p><p>Water dripped, and that eerie, skittering noise seemed to come from somewhere much closer this time.</p><p>Kite was frozen, his mind blanking to the hellish three months he'd spent stranded on a lonely mountain, in a tiny country close to the arctic, all for the sake of his bloody fucking research, alive now <em>only </em>because Neferpitou had been trekking through that mountain on a leisure trip since they'd lived mere miles away, all the while Kite had believed he'd been transported to Hell after the blizzard had separated him from his research party, and left him stranded in the cold little mountain that felt so, so much like an island.</p><p>“Count to three,” Neferpitou whispered softly into his ear.</p><p>Kite blinked back tears, but counted to three in his head and then exhaled. He counted to three again, inhaled, counted to three, and exhaled. He repeated the exercise until the fog in his head lifted and he could hear the water dripping again. The skittering had since stopped, but now there was something else.</p><p>Kite noticed a pair of rheumy, red eyes watching from some yards away.</p><p>“Pitou,” he whispered gravely.</p><p>“Slowly,” they warned, releasing Kite's waist. “Get to the landing, and then run.”</p><p>Neferpitou didn't turn to face the eyes, but Kite could barely tear his gaze away. The door to the basement had long since broken down, so it was a matter of six or seven more steps until they reached the landing, and after the landing, there was only a couple of yards until they reached the street because the building had lost its front door too, and most of its windows, and it was <em>supposed </em>to be abandoned, but instead-</p><p>“Kite,” Neferpitou whispered deadly soft into his ear, “<em>up.</em>”</p><p> </p><p>Kite's feet moved slowly up the stairs, but he couldn't tear his gaze away from the eyes watching their every move. He counted to three and leveled his breaths, blinked a few times, and yet the eyes didn't disappear. He should have been hallucinating, but he wasn't, and so he moved, up, up, and up until he reached the landing.</p><p>When one foot was on the landing, something <em>flew </em>across the room. It was only after Neferpitou yelped in pain that Kite broke out of his haze and looked down at the thin, wiry fingers wrapped around Neferpitou's leg.</p><p>“Pitou!” Kite barked, and without thinking, he pulled Neferpitou up and dragged the creature's hand up the stairs with them.</p><p>Kite saw blue, emaciated fingers in the dim moonlight, <em>too </em>thin to be human. It almost looked like a certain hand he'd encountered on the lonely mountain, a hand belonging to a thin, wiry creature too tall to be considered human, and yet it had offered Kite its hand anyway, and Kite had almost taken it... Almost.</p><p>Just then, Neferpitou yanked their own foot straight, and <em>stomped</em> on the creature's hand with all their might.</p><p>A screech rang throughout the building, but the creature let go, and it only took those two fateful seconds for Kite to yank on Neferpitou's hand one more time before they reached the landing together, booked it across the abandoned first floor, and jumped out of the rectangular hole where the door used to be.</p><p>Its screams followed them well into the streets, and only after they were in the Cadillac and speeding away did Kite finally realize that the creature's eyes hadn't been red after all.</p><p>They'd been bleeding.</p><hr/><p>They'd cocooned themselves in Neferpitou's room at the royal estate of the esteemed House of Chimera, the oldest money in the city, and one Kite would have declined entering any other time, but not tonight.</p><p>Kite had wrapped a bandage over the red imprint left on Neferpitou's pale white skin. They'd pouted and held a pillow close to their chest while Kite had finished dressing the wound, but as soon as the first aid kit had been put away, Neferpitou had tossed the pillow aside and wrestled Kite into a comfortable spoon.</p><p>Kite held Neferpitou's hands to his chest while they grumbled about how they didn't give a damn if their mother walked in to see them canoodling their lover, they were <em>thirty years old</em>, damn it, they'd earned the right to canoodle. Kite could have grumbled along, but he found his thoughts drifting back to those bleeding red eyes and those wiry, thin hands, and the bone-chilling cold he'd felt when he'd thought Neferpitou was going to be snatched away.</p><p>“Kite,” Neferpitou whined. “I'm sorry. I'll keep my hands to myself until the apartment is ready,” said the person who was currently feeling up Kite's chest as if their hands were made solely for that reason.</p><p>Kite sighed in response, softly squeezing Neferpitou's hands. Then he closed his eyes and laid still.</p><p>Soon, Neferpitou's snores drifted through the room, but Kite dwelt. With his eyes closed, and his back to his lover's chest, he dwelt on the rheumy, bleeding eyes and the emaciated hand, and he thought, and he thought, and he thought – and he <em>remembered</em>.</p><p>Kite's eyes shot open when he heard a skittering sound move across the wooden floor of Neferpitou's room. He didn't even have to move because slowly, a pair of bleeding red eyes emerged from the shadows, and Kite could only scream while it reached out its hand.</p><p>“Rise and shine!”</p><p>Kite's eyes shot open. Bright rays of light filtered into the grand room while he took deep, loud breaths.</p><p>“... Kite?”</p><p>Neferpitou was already up and dressed. Kite blinked back the fatigue and picked himself up. Before he could trudge his way to the bathroom, Neferpitou pulled him into a hug.</p><p>They barely reached his chest, and yet, they'd saved him – over and over again.</p><p>“I'm fine,” he assured the shorter of the two, but Neferpitou didn't believe him, and merely grumbled into his chest.</p><p>“Pitou,” Kite said, “I promise.”</p><p>“I'm sorry,” they mumbled into Kite's chest.</p><p>Instead of repeating his words, he wrapped both arms around his beloved and hugged them back. The red eyes and wiry hand clawed at the back of his mind, but it didn't matter if they reminded him of the dead bodies he'd discovered lined against each other in the snow on that lonely, as if one day they'd all decided that enough was enough and let the mountain take them together. It didn't matter if those bodies looked alive, with their red eyes and blue hands, those frost-caked lips that looked almost as if they could still speak. It didn't matter if the creature they'd found in that basement was likely a wraith that refused to depart their world. It didn't matter.</p><p>Nothing mattered – nothing, but Neferpitou.</p><p>“Let's make out,” Neferpitou tried, and instantly, Kite bonked the shorter of the two on the head and made his way to the shower while Neferpitou wailed about their broken skull.</p><p>And Kite smiled.</p><hr/><p> </p>
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